I kind of wish we could have two sets of Enhancements for our powers. One set of Enhancements is used during PvE, and you can slot any sort of Enhancements in those: Training, DO, SO, Hami, etc.
The other slot of Enhancements is AUTOMATICALLY used when participating in PvP. And these slots will only hold Training, DO, and SO Enhancements.
It solves the 'elite loot' problem, and it might also save me the pain of frequently adjusting enhancements as I go between PvE and PvP, because I imagine I'd like my powers slotted a little differently for each.
[Edit: And if you leave your PvP slots empty for a power, it will use your PvE enhancements...but totally ignore any Hami's you have slotted...so if you're high enough level to have Hami's, you can afford slotting out your powers twice...and if you're low enough level that you can't afford that...just leave your PvP slots empty and you'll use the same ones from your PvE slots.[/Edit]
p
I'll say this in no uncertain terms: I'm thoroughly against Hamidon enhancements in the arena. I think Hamidon in and of itself breaks the basic paradigm of how "loot" is handled in this game, a paradigm that was one of its greatest strengths.
I have no interest in farming Hamidon enhancements repetitively. In this, I think I am far from alone. I do not believe this makes be a "bad" player. I do not believe mindlessly farming raid content makes one an "elite" player either. It does not help that not all Archetypes have an equal opportunity to be useful against Hamidon (one of my pet peeves).
Unfortunately, because Hamidon enhancements are much more powerful than standard ones, they will be the trump card in PvP. MMORPGs being what they are, people will load up on them to the point that it will quickly become mandatory to load up on Hamidon enhancements if you want to do PvP at all and not be laughed out of the arena.
In my personal opinion, having Hamidon enhancements at all was a bit of a mistake considering the rest of the game's design, though it simply wasn't a real problem before PvP entered the picture. It was only a matter of time before people started farming the encounter to load up. Now it'll become a requirement for effective PvP; players without large numbers of Hamidon enhancers simply need not apply.
One suggestion would be to simply raise the level cap so at the top level Hamidon enhancements become unusable. There would still be a period of bad balance in the 45-55 range or so, but at least it wouldn't be permanent.
At least, give a way to turn them off as an arena option, so that people without Hamidon enhancers can have meaningful PvP at the higher levels, and people with them can still get meaningful competition. The arena is supposed to be about friendly competition, let's at least have the means to get a fair fight.
I'm interested in friendly arena competition, and I don't want to have to stop at level 47 because I'd need to spend countless hours raiding Hamidon to give my opponent something resembling an interesting fight.
Heck, maybe I'm being pessimistic, and people without Hamidon enhancements will play with each other and leave the people with to their own devices. That doesn't strike me as desirable, either, but at least the arena won't become useless.
Hello everyone,
I have read every post so far. I have to say that there are good arguements for and against using the Hami Enhancements.
I'm not sure why they were put into the game to begin with.
The game was built to eventually house PvP, we all know that. It has been stated time and time again from Statesman that this game is for fun and doing fun things. Risk vs Reward and all that. It has also been stated time and time again that this game won't have 'loot' or such things.
Prestige items have come into the game, we all know what they are. SO I am guessing HO's fall into that category.
Did they gear the game and steer us all towards this eventuality? Is this the nature of every MMO game to boil down to something like loot? Is it 'loot'?
From what I have seen on the boards and in game, people will use and to a point abuse anything they can.
Wasn't it Statesman who said during one of his earlier interviews as to why the enviroment couldn't be used. Something to the effect of moving furniture to block a door? Didn't that mean that he knew then of people's nature towards abuse? If he did know of 'abuse', then is he sanctioning it now?
I haven't done a Hamidon mission yet, I am looking forward to it to see what it is. Thanks to reading the boards I now know to look for something called a 'bud' for an enhancement.
Another question that comes to mind, how does someone who doesn't ever read the boards even know what to look for?
Wasn't there promised a PDF file of the updated rulebook? Although I dont think the original held any information of detailed use either.
I have a Scrapper and a Blaster, neither 50, so I am not worried about 50 end content nor about someone beating me using a 50 (It would happen haha).
I guess I wonder what is or was the point of HO's? Was it to be 'Uber' and 'Elite' in PvP? Was it to make it easier in the upper levels for PvE? What is IN those levels to where one should 'need' HO's in PvE?
If it was for 'Ubberness' in PvP, then why have there always been 'Fun vs UnFun' implimented in all the other things for CoH?
Perhaps this post has no meaning, perhaps I am mearly asking questions and looking to see what answers the more informed players have.
I certainly am not advocating the usage or blockage of HO's.
I figure I will win or lose as I do. A field where all things being equal would have been funner I think than facing off agaisnt 'special' things that one, not every player is aware of, and two, not every player can get with frequency.
Either way, I will do PvP at times but not camp it out hoping to beat everyone who chooses to try it. Haha, with my luck, I will have more losses than wins and yuck, who wants that haha.
Either way all, hope that PvP is something fun to be added. So far it seems to be seperate from PvE and not affect that aspect of the game.
Cosmic Herald
Member of Team Awesome���
Justice Server
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Exactly Booster - Farming Portals for XP, Farming Wolves for XP, Farming Winterlords for XP, Farming Hami for Enhancements - all fit States' definition of "unfun". There has to/should be a change forthcoming.
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Except fighting Hami is VERY fun. Much more fun than the 638th "kill all in warehouse" mission. Feels like something epic is going on. I need to hurry up and get these two levels so I can join the raiding without the max debt scare.
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Heck - knocking off Hami for the first time should be great fun. And there are many that would say that farming wolves is a blast too, and that the winterlords ended too soo. Fun is subjective. However, when the reason for arresting Hami changes from "for the thrill of it" to "Hami-O's 4 teh winZorZ" it falls into States' definition of an "unfun" activity.
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Like I said the same thing can be said for the missions. After awhile, you just get tired of saving [insert random NPC] that the [insert villain group] decided to kidnap and kill but never get around to it before you get there to save them.
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
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Another fire/dev has his sniper attack sloted with 6 damage/range.
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6 Hamidon raids. Time spent = reward. Big deal.
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One of the selling points of CoH for some people, is that this does not apply. Your lvl 10 or 50 character can be just as powerfull as someone else's even if they have played the game since release on other chars.
Hammidon enhances will get annoying in random pvp battles. But it might not be a problem at all for those who dont care about pvp ladders as long as the devs dont start balancing AVs around hamidon enhancements, which wont happen.
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MMORPGs being what they are, people will load up on them to the point that it will quickly become mandatory to load up on Hamidon enhancements if you want to do PvP at all and not be laughed out of the arena.
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Sounds about right.
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At least, give a way to turn them off as an arena option, so that people without Hamidon enhancers can have meaningful PvP at the higher levels, and people with them can still get meaningful competition.
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/sign
I have an HO. It doesn't make the screaming difference you folks seem to think it does, honestly.
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Hammidon enhances will get annoying in random pvp battles. But it might not be a problem at all for those who dont care about pvp ladders as long as the devs dont start balancing AVs around hamidon enhancements, which wont happen.
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There won't be many random pvp battles.
AV's will never, ever be balanced around HO's. They are a toy for the endgame, something nice for your level 50 to get. Nothing more.
I just think it's sad how so many people write off pvp simply because of the existence of HO's.
Dawnslayer on Virtue.
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Do we put wieghted bands and Anklets on the better fighter in the ring to even things up when he has trained to be better than others? Do we shorten the bats on superior baseball players? Do we krack the knees of fast running backs? No we do not.
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While I don't think your argument has much merit, I'm going to grab this analogy because it's particularly apt.
What happens in a sport when one team or technique dominages so much that the show and competitiveness suffers?
That's right. They change the rules. Sometimes even if the skill was legitimate and hard-won.
Take hockey (what can I say, I'm Canadian). It's got serious problems right now because of lack of scoring. They're talking about limiting the size of goaltenders' equipment to provide a better show, to favor more offense.
At one point when a team was on the power play (they have more players on the ice because of a penalty to the other team) a team could score any number of goals during the penalty. Then the Montreal Canadiens became so good on the power play that the rule was changed so that one goal during the penalty would end the power play. This was a rule change aimed at rebalancing the game -- squarely by weakening the too-powerful Canadiens.
In effect, they nerfed power plays. 
And they did it was because they were so good at playing the game, not because they'd farmed the Forum for +5 hockey sticks of shooting and passing.
An other example that might be more familiar to our American friends. IIRC, college basketball eliminated the dunk rule to prevent Kareem Abdul-Jaabar from dominating games. He kept dominating games because he was such an awesome player and found other ways to dominate, but they did change the rule to impede him directly.
Hamidon Enhancers are simply not good for competition. There ought to be, at least, the option of turning them off.
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Exactly Booster - Farming Portals for XP, Farming Wolves for XP, Farming Winterlords for XP, Farming Hami for Enhancements - all fit States' definition of "unfun". There has to/should be a change forthcoming.
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Except fighting Hami is VERY fun. Much more fun than the 638th "kill all in warehouse" mission. Feels like something epic is going on. I need to hurry up and get these two levels so I can join the raiding without the max debt scare.
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Heck - knocking off Hami for the first time should be great fun. And there are many that would say that farming wolves is a blast too, and that the winterlords ended too soo. Fun is subjective. However, when the reason for arresting Hami changes from "for the thrill of it" to "Hami-O's 4 teh winZorZ" it falls into States' definition of an "unfun" activity.
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Like I said the same thing can be said for the missions. After awhile, you just get tired of saving [insert random NPC] that the [insert villain group] decided to kidnap and kill but never get around to it before you get there to save them.
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But the difference is, you don't get Uber Loot by doing missions. The only way to get it is by raiding Hami. There is no other option. You can't just say, "I'm tired of raiding Hami. I'm gonna go do missions for my Hami-O's."
-Jag
Balance is not about making everybody the same. Balance is about making your strengths worth all of your weaknesses.
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I just think it's sad how so many people write off pvp simply because of the existence of HO's.
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Some of us have been through this in other games. Think of it as a "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me" kind of thing.
If the Devs want to tilt PvP heavily in favor of folks willing/able to Farm... well, why are we suprised when those who don't want to Farm say "to hell with it"?
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Like I said the same thing can be said for the missions.
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You could also skip missions and still get to 50 -- that path is available.
Can you skip Hami and still get HOs...?
I definetly want to take the wait and see approach here and so I can't make any statements about exactly how things will work. Instead I will operate based on the arguments being made and assume all of their conjecture is accurate.
Cleen,
The "fitness" argument only holds water if you assume that everyone has an equal chance at some kind of similar training. If I'm too poor to afford a gym membership I can still run on the public streets or get a job involving manual labor. (stocking, lumberjack, or t.v. delivery etc.) By doing this I could theoretically equal your abilities that you gained eating wheat glutton and using the Nautilus 1843 Make-A-Man machine. Hamidon isn't extra work. It is a different kind of work. If I don't choose to belong to an SG with enough members of appropriate level to gain this reward it doesn't mean you worked harder so I deserve to get beaten. It's the difference between a street trained boxer and a Don King owned boxer. If the street trained boxer works hard enough and is smart enough he can beat the "sure thing". But a bonus like Hamidon enhancements means someone who chooses to do TFs or exemplaring or any other content cannot hope to compete. Untill they make a similar reward for a similar amount of work on a smaller team this system will be worthy of ridicule. Why should this game be about who you know, instead of what you know? (SG size vs. Build)
For the guy who said "why are some people rich and some poor?", if you want this game to be a perfect mirror of society and all of its ills you will have a lot of people flaming you. I will only ask if you would think it fair for the devs to artificially limit your powers to one enhancement slot each because you were born poor? If so I want to see your pledge that you will stand in solidarity with all the $1 a day people all over the world by only using one training enhancement for all of your powers in the arena while the rest of us beat you up and tell you it isn't our fault that God wanted us to be rich and to beat you up.
I understand that the people who beat Hamidon want something for their efforts but really why should you get more just for coordination? That is the only thing you have accomplished. The person who has done every TF in the game successfully is far more worthy of a good reward than the person who stands around and clicks a few dozen powers while less than 10 people do the star work. Hamidon raids do not require as much patience and time as doing all the TFs or getting every exploration badge on your own. Why not give potentially ridiculously overpowering rewards for that? 3 times the effectiveness per slot is INSANELY overpowering. If this is the true setup then 45+ PvP without them is completely idiotic.
How many people like to watch a fight where one boxer gets hit with punches that do about the same damage as the other but 3 times as accurate? This is completely boring. This is why only washups fight rank amateurs at the end of their pro careers. This is why there is an All Star game in baseball and not an All Star team that plays the whole regular season vs. a minor league team. This is why we don't pit MIT professors vs. high school students in Mathalons.
But wait, all of these ideas assume skill or training.... so they don't work! It is more accurate to say that one student is told to show up for a fair contest while the other gets a TI-93 to do their equations. (OH but if the pencil and paper kid uses tactics and is a super genius he will win!) I am fine with giving HOs to 7 year olds who can't press anything but brawl without drooling on their keyboard and shorting it out. But if there is a contest between 2 competitors that are even marginally in the same skill level the HO person should win every time. (and if they don't either they are truly worthy of ridicule from the entire community or the math on these is wrong)
I guess I wouldnt be against "Hami-o's" in PvP if there was more ways to get such enhancements. Its pretty sad when the "endgame" becomes a farm. Lets face the facts there isnt much "endgame" about hami anymore. All it takes now is a ton of one specific AT and temp power. Want some Hami-o's? come to justice server where he goes down more often than a $2 ****** on payday.
Its also sad when a game I love that I thought was different than the rest in the loot factor will posibily become just like the rest, where the "uber loot" is the only way to stay competitive in PvP. Yeah it can be said well why dont I just join a raid a get some hami-o's but I dont have a AT that is of use and im not the type to just leech off the rest to wait till the end to get the enhancements.
Oh well Ill just wait and see like the rest hoping that PvP will be balanced as I thought it would be.
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I find it sad so many people are willing to give up just because some people have special enhancements...
A Blaster with Hamihancers still has Blaster weaknesses... No matter how many Hamihancers I have, if I don't play smart, I'm going to lose - period...
I've played many games (not MMOs) which pit you against others and the one thing I've learned is that it doesn't matter what advantage you have on your side, if the other player outsmarts you and/or simply outplays you - you're going to lose...
An idiot player with Hamihancers is still an idiot player...
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True point. Very true.
Now...how about two players of equal skill? One HO user, one non-HO user.
Who wins now?
On top of that, because of such an advantage, "killer" as it was worded, the HO-hero can make more mistakes than they'd usually do, and the HO's would help compensate for that.
And even after that, they still might lose one on one, if fortune smiles upon the non-HO user.
Ok, now, how about a HO-tricked out SUPERGROUP, vs a non-HO using supergroup. While one HO-hero can be in a half coma with one arm, they have the full backing of ALL their teammates with all their HO "l33tn3ss" to help overcome the poor schmucks who may have as many hours logged on in CoH as the "Ub3r HO-Heros", but decided to do missions or start on alts instead.
Again, I will always reiterate this point. Bravo (claps hands enthusiastically) on taking down Hami, even more props for successfully repeating the deed. You've earned your HO's, be proud, stand tall, you deserve to use them in the Arena, but I still think that they should have been separated from the rest of the users.
Now as it stands, it looks as if the top spots of 45+ladder shall only be for HO users.
But, like I've also said elsewhere, I'm still gonna try my luck and see what happens. Who knows, maybe the fates will smile upon the underdog.
I have utter faith in the minds behind "City of Heroes", so I'm not going to give up on 45+ PvP yet.
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I have utter faith in the minds behind "City of Heroes", so I'm not going to give up on 45+ PvP yet.
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So do I, but I'm not sure how much it has sunk in that this will be a "kills-the-feature" design issue. Which I absolutely feel it is.
From States' comments I think it hasn't. I think it's worthwhile to keep pointing it out until the devs come out and say "we have a solution" -- not what said solution will be, just that they've got a fix. My impression right now is that they don't.
just o let people know, i was hitting caps on all attacks with aim and build up already, so hami enahncers just save me some slots, that's all
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Wrong!
I'll have less respect for a post 45 PvP title, not the player. I never said that the those with HOs are bad or lack skill. I'm noting that HOs may tip the scales for them. I liken it to steroids, corked bats and such. They don't ensure success, but they do help. I know that not everyone 45+ will have HOs and may hold some PvP rank, but because I cannot see their enhancements, I'll have to question their true skill. I was also reminding the players that they do not have to be worried about HOs as they don't have to deal with players who have them.
Why the remark about sour grapes? I'm sure that's something you would not tell me in person, so please, try to be more polite.
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Just an observation here, and I'm only half way through this thread, so pardon me if this has already been brought up.
Aren't HO's level 50? Doesn't that mean that the earliest that you can equip one would be at level 47? I've never been part of a hamidon raid, so I'm not sure. If this is the case, should players level 45 and 46 be in the same weight class as 47-50?
The one 'good' thing about Hamidon enhancements is that they're only available to a limited number of players. It's going to unbalance the post lvl 45 PVP scene, but lower than lvl 42 it's more or less a non-issue.
And remember, all it takes for the Devs to stop Hamidon farming is a few more tweaks to Hamidon's hold resistance. Just because they have not done it yet doesn't mean it's not going to happen.
say good bye to this thread cause someon posted a link to ebay, bye bye post
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I have an HO. It doesn't make the screaming difference you folks seem to think it does, honestly.
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It's like the difference between a power when you first get it and when it's fully slotted. One HO is not a big deal, but 5 or 6 of them will make a significant difference.
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As far as the arena is concerned, I was excited about it at first. The more I hear about it the less interested I become. When does Issue 5 come out again?
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Heh, my thoughts exactly.
The easiest solution to this problem would be to break the 45-50 range into two classes. A "Natural" class where PvP combat has a no HO restriction and an "Open" class where anything goes. That way you'll know whether or not the playing field is level or if you should be expecting to be fighting a player with better than average enhancements.
What I don't understand is this...
There's a lot of people posting here saying they don't have time to farm Hami for the Hami-o's. Ok fair enough. Given the number of people saying that, then it seems only logical that there will be lots of people 45+ who won't have them for what ever reason.
Which means there will be plenty of PvP action 45+ free of Hami-o's. Sure you'll never know before the fight if the person you're fighting has them or not. But you'll either be able to tell fairly quickly, and quit the match or forfit, which will cost you nothing other then some Infl, which 45+ means nothing...
Or you won't be able to tell, in which case it won't really matter any.
I've seen this happen in other games. MMOs specifically, and the trouble created is definately not worth it.
On one side you'll have the large guild/group/supergroup made up of primarily people with lots of time to play, they'll powerlevel each other's alts, and they'll have in the end a large number of characters that they can take to raids/events/etc and then they DECLARE that it's private.
Then on the other side, you have the casual/wannabe powergame who wants to get all the rewards, but doesn't want to / can't invest the next three days of their life camping a rare spawn, or farming something to get the most loot.
Who's right? They both are. Each is wanting to have fun in their own way, who am I to deny them that? But the problem is these two groups, with differing goals, and paths to those goals, are now forced to take the same path to the last goal, in this case the Arena.
The easy fix for this would have been for States to say that any HOs you have will become +3 SOs for your visit to the arena, and they will affect only one stat. Perhaps the programming involved would not have been easy, but certainly it would have been easier than to deal with what's to come under the current system.
Oh, and trust me on this.. if you think it's bad now? just wait, it's going to get much uglier...
Ninja looters, Large groups declaring that the public can only have access at certain times if at all, heck in one game I saw a really large guild basically declare one of the ultimate raids offlimits to nonmembers. Noone else had the means to deal with this, and the DEVS finally had to step in and say NO, you don't own anything. Public raids with designated looters...
ugh.. I don't even want to think about it anymore, I hated that crap..
Looks like to me that the easy solution for States and crew now is to program into the arena rules interface the ability to shutdown HOs, then noone need complain that they only lost because the other guy has all HOs installed..
To the poster who said the problem is that HOs are only available one way through the game, and that this is a problem... here I agree.
HOs, or their moral equivalent, should IMHO be available to people who are willing and able to do equivalently hard things, to put in the same kind of time and effort and risk and debt (though the debt is less of an issue for the 50s, the 'risk' of failure is still large)
Maybe an 8 man TF, with no 'easy out' scenario, one which is mind-crushingly, soul-numbingly difficult. Requiring not only the right mix of characters, but good play.
Maybe a solo mission, again on that makes strong men weep.
Maybe even for sale... for 10 Million Influence or so. Maybe alot more.
I agree that there should be other hard, and hopefully more enjoyable/rewarding ways to get the things.
Maybe as a benefit for soloing something of respec trial difficulty.
Maybe alot of ways, so long as they are difficult enough to justify the reward.
But to say 'no Hami-Os, because I dont like Hami Raids' is similar to me saying 'No Accolades, I hate collecting badges' or perhaps even 'no powers, because I hate gaining levels' (Actually, they are already somewhat doing this, with their 'weight classes'... sigh).
I do hope there can be some middle ground where we can have a casual friendly game without it becoming pure pandering to the lowest common denominator.
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What I dislike is the fact that we can not take advantage of the DUMB [censored] who chalanges some one 20 levels higher than him/her. If they are stupid enough to do it they should pay for it. And I don't even plan on doing PvP.
Later,
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Well, take into account your powers *will* be better slotted than his.
You will have an advantage, even if only a slight one.
Tygara - 50 Claws/Regen/Power Scrapper, Virtue- Member of Kitties on the Prowl.
Shadeburn - Dark/Rad Defender, Virtue- Member of Catch 'Em Crew
Nature Boy' - Elec/Ice Blaster, Virtue - Member of Young Phalanx